


Part of His Universe

by Madrigogs



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2015-09-11
Packaged: 2018-04-05 19:47:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4192647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madrigogs/pseuds/Madrigogs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shorts and drabbles featuring everyone's favorite magic-loving sword-fighting nerd.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Jam Buds

Stevonnie had left a persistent change in them. It was subtle and vague, and it had taken months for Connie to notice, but it was there. It was a sort of invisible connection between her and Steven that had lasted long after they fell apart.

She’d felt the first inkling of it the first time they’d played music together. Connie thought she could play violin well enough, she just didn’t have much of a creative spark. But as soon as they’d started playing it all fell into place. Their song was improvised, but it flowed so effortlessly if felt almost practiced. Like they somehow knew exactly where the other was going.

She became aware of it as they fought in the Sky Arena. Standing in front of Pearl they’d been in complete harmony. Connie knew as she took her first step that Steven was going to be right there with her. As she aggressed she knew that he was right behind her, keeping in perfect step. And as she saw Pearl’s strike coming she knew he would turn with her and block it. She knew all these things because as did them she felt with utter certainty that Steven knew them too. They were in sync. Wordlessly connected and fully tuned to each other. Like dancers going through a choreographed routine.

She finally understood the change when they actually had been dancers, twirling and dancing to an old song in the car wash parking lot. It had only taken seconds before the invisible connection between them became a visible blend _of_ them. It felt different from before. There was no confusion this time, they weren’t even quite aware that they’d fused at all. Stevonnie’s disparate parts had just folded cleanly into the being they’d been once before. If it hadn’t been for Steven’s dad they would have gone on dancing without noticing.

But the shocked look on his face had torn them apart. Stevonnie’s blended personality was unraveled and pulled in different directions. One way by Connie’s utter panic at the thought of her parents finding out. Another by Steven’s concern about his dad’s possible reaction. The vague sense of embarrassment both felt cut through what remained of their fusion and they both fell hard onto the concrete.

Thankfully their concerns proved unfounded. On the long drive out of Beach City to take Connie home Steven broke the silence like he so often did. He picked up his ukulele and started playing one of the songs they’d listened to earlier. In response Connie picked up one of the myriad of instruments strewn about the van and joined him. One song bled into an unplanned medley that morphed into its own little thing. Just two jam buds jamming along together. Perfectly in tune with one another through their invisible connection, now even stronger than it had been before.


	2. Keeping Records

Steven sent her pictures all the time. Taken as a whole the folder she kept of them was pretty much the perfect representation of him and his life, a fascinating mixture of the mundane and the magical. There were lots of photos of things like the two of them making goofy faces, or his latest crazy food concoction. But there were also plenty of more fantastic things. Like the one of him with his fingers transformed into cats, or the massive field of human shaped watermelons he’d accidentally created. 

Naturally her favorites were the ones he’d taken on missions. He normally didn’t bring his phone for fear of breaking it, but every now and then he’d risk it if Garnet said it’d be safe. Even those albums were very distinctly Steven. He was about as likely to take a picture of an interesting looking rock as some ancient Gem technology.

There was also one other file that she kept in that same folder. Several years back she’d started keeping a digital journal. Up until she met Steven it was mostly comprised of her rambling thoughts on whatever series had captured her interest at the time. Now it was a whole lot more interesting. She’d written about her own adventures with Steven of course. How they met, the robot training thing, and so on. She was pretty sure this was the only actual record of what had happened to the ocean when it disappeared. And for obvious reasons she was entirely certain it was the only human account of being a fusion. She’d also collected all the other gem-related things she could. The stories Steven had told her (quoted as accurately as she could remember songs, puns, and all) and whatever she picked up from the Gems, Mr. Universe, and the townspeople. 

In truth it was a very foolish thing to keep at home. Though she had it pretty well-hidden of course. Everything was on a flash drive she kept carefully tucked away in her room. Her parents were pretty overbearing, but they did generally respect her privacy. So all in all she wasn’t too worried. 

Even if that had been a concern she still would have risked it though. Not only because she was sure that she would want to keep it for herself, but because she felt strongly on principle that they should be preserved. Steven didn’t seem to fully grasp how amazing these things really were, and people in general didn’t even notice that anything was going on at all. The Gems kept to themselves and didn’t have any interest in telling their stories to humanity. That was fine. But the idea that it would all just be lost forever, not noted down or acknowledged by anyone, was unacceptable. _Something_ should be recorded _somewhere_ , even if the Gems just ended up sitting on it for eternity. 

In a way she actually did want her parents to find it. Not _now_ of course, that would be completely disastrous. But between the actual genuine alien invasion and Pearl’s combat training she’d been thinking about them a lot lately. How they’d deal with something happening to her. Finding some way to pass it onto them seemed like a decent chance to get them to understand. One last glance into their daughter’s mind and life, and maybe some idea of why she’d been lying to them. She only hoped that they didn’t blame Steven. 

Whatever way she decided to arrange for it to be found, she was going to make sure she told them to give it to him as well. If anyone was going to need reassurance about her decision to get involved, it would be him.


	3. Something Extraordinary

Connie’s hands were rough and calloused from her training. Steven’s were still just as soft and smooth as always. Connie could see her muscles growing gradually more defined every week. Steven didn’t look much different than he had before. Connie always felt sore the day after a training session, and she picked up plenty of scrapes and bruises along the way. Sometimes Steven did and sometimes he didn’t. It seemed to depend on how hard he’d thought the session had been, how much Connie displayed her soreness, and what else was on his mind at the time. 

Steven was more than human, he was just inconsistent about it. Sometimes he had trouble opening jars, but she’d seen the shattered remains of the glovebox he’d punched clean through in his dad’s van. Several times she’d seen him left sore and exhausted the day after a mission that had merely involved a long walk and a slightly missed bedtime. But he hadn’t even noticed the nearly eighteen hour ride across the seabed on Lion’s back. Her body had felt like it’d been beaten for days afterward, but the only lasting effect it had on him was the extreme concern for his new friend. 

He thought of himself with human limitations so that’s what he usually had. But sometimes he slipped and let himself go further. Steven didn’t seem to notice in the slightest, but she wasn’t going to tell him. Partially it was because she didn’t want to psyche him out of it, and partially it was that she didn’t want to make him question his human identity any more than he already did. 

She hoped he didn’t realize, not for a while more anyway. He seemed to be what he thought of himself as, and thinking of himself as a superpowered half-alien might change him. No matter how hard she tried she just couldn’t imagine him as a warrior. It wasn’t that he wasn’t brave or that he wouldn’t fight. It was that he was something better than a fighter. He was a defender, and a particularly remarkable one at that. He didn’t just want to protect what he loved, he wanted to make it better. To heal everything and everyone he encountered in every way he could. 

He wasn’t just a human, and he wasn’t just a gem. He was something more than both. And she hoped he stayed that way.


	4. The Highlight of the Schoolday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a little while hasn't it? Textsbetweengems got me thinking about Connie and Steven texting each other, so out sprang this little drabble.

There were certain advantages to having a mother who was so extremely concerned about health and nutrition. The biggest in Connie’s mind was that the carefully assembled lunches that were packed for her meant that she never had to partake in the usually dreadful looking school meals. She wouldn’t go so far as to say that they were _enticing_ , but they certainly tended to be far more appetizing than the soggy frozen foods and watery vegetables that the cafeteria typically served. 

While unpacking her lunch she looked around the room and noted the positions of the faculty members that kept an eye on the students. Seeing that none of them were nearby or taking any particular interest in anything near her she carefully slid her phone out of her pocket. She knew she needn’t be so worried. The phone rules were almost never enforced during lunch, and there were plenty of other kids flaunting them far more openly than her, but she was cautious anyway. If she got her phone confiscated at school it would certainly mean having her phone privileges revoked by her parents.

Most of Connie’s classmates thought she was weird for choosing to waste her lunchtime sitting off by herself in silence. But the truth was that she spent it pretty much like they did, it was just that the friend she talked to didn’t go to school. She flipped open her phone and read the most recent text message.

Steven: Going on a mission. Talk to you later!

“Darn” she sighed. Not that it was unexpected. Steven was as likely as not to be unavailable at lunch, but she still looked forward to talking with him. She wouldn’t be without something to do though since Steven had, like usual, sent her more than enough messages to last her through her lunch period. She scrolled the top and began reading. 

Amongst the typical (but always appreciated) good wishes and bad jokes from Steven there were a few pictures. The first was a selfie at the Big Donut captioned “Lars and Sadie say hi!” Sadie and Steven were both smiling and waving while Lars seemed to be napping at the counter. After that was a long series of pics that more or less traced Steven’s meandering path through Beach City. There was that weird fry shop guy holding what looked like a homemade Geiger counter, a cloud Steven thought looked like Archimicarus (she didn’t see it), a rock he thought looked like Lion (she did see that one), and eventually another selfie with Lars. This time it looked like Steven had ambushed him with the camera when he was taking the trash out to the dumpster. 

As was usually the case with Steven things didn’t stay so normal for long. His next text read “We fought a magic lobster!” Followed by a picture of the cliff face next to his house with several new circular scorch marked captioned “Pearl missed.” And then a photo of the wrecked porch where a boulder had crashed through the railing and screen door. The rest of the messages detailed his enthusiastic assistance with the repairs. She couldn’t help at smiling and chuckling throughout them, it was classic Steven to go into infinitely more detail about using a power drill than fighting an enormous gem creature. She made a mental note to get Steven to give her a proper blow-by-blow of the action later. 

The bell rang shortly after she finished forwarding the pictures to her email (thank goodness for her parent’s unlimited plan). She gathered up the various lunch containers into her lunchbox and prepared for the quick sprint to her locker before her next class. "Only three and a half more hours." She thought. She hoped Steven was back from his mission by then.


	5. Apologies

“I’m sorry I revealed your secret identity Connie.” The apology caught her a bit off guard. She hadn’t really put any blame on Steven for this, they were her lies after all. 

“It’s okay Steven, really. None of this is your fault. Besides, I guess it went over okay.” She forced a little smile, but it fell once she took a good look at Steven. He seemed sort of downcast, and he was clutching the sword very strangely. “Are you doing okay Steven?” He set the end of the scabbard down on the pavement. 

“No, I’m fine it’s just…” His face brightened visibly as a thought came to him. “Wait…does that mean she’ll let you keep the sword?” 

Connie glanced back at her mother, anxiously shifting as she leaned on the trunk of the car. “I think we should wait on that. For now at least.” 

“Oh. Alright.” He said, disappointment spreading across his face. Lion seemed to have been listening since he kneeled down as soon as Steven turned toward him. The intricately engraved weapon was enveloped in a pink glow as he slid it into Lion’s mane. “I guess I should get back to the Gems. They’ll want to know about the Clusters. See you tomorrow?” 

Connie sighed. “No, I’m sure I’ll still be grounded. I’ll call you if I can though.” Her mother made her way over to them

“How are you and your er…lion, getting home?”

Steven grew an enormous smile. “In style! Lion’ll take me.” Mrs. Maheswaran didn’t have much time to question how exactly he expected a Lion to carry him all the way back to Beach City before he jumped on Lion’s back and said a quick farewell to them. Connie, being so used to travelling by Lion, wasn’t the least bit surprised about what happened next. But Mrs. Maheswaran gave a startled yelp and a jump when Lion let out a bone-shaking roar and leaped through a large pink portal. 

Connie noticed her mother trembling as she went through her systematic checks of the mirrors, her hands were shaking badly enough that the key missed the ignition twice before she managed it. The calm classical piece coming over the local public radio station didn’t do much to sooth the exhaustion and anxiety of either of them though. Connie felt conflicted. On one hand there was a sense of relief that she wouldn’t have to maintain the lies any further. Hiding every little scrape, keeping mental lists of explanations for every conceivable scenario, the paranoid feelings that it could fall apart at any moment, it all took its toll. And there was a good deal of reassurance in her mother saying that she was too controlling. She’d always felt guilty and uncertain whenever she got frustrated or angry about her parents, and knowing that she was justified in thinking it was wrong and abnormal relieved a lot of pressure.

Plus, it had to happen at some point. She’d always known that, and it was almost certainly better this way. She could never have worked up the conviction to tell them herself. So what would the alternative have been? That one day her family would wake up to an armada of alien ships choking the sky and the battle readied Gems on their doorstep to collect Connie for war? Or worse, what if they hadn’t found out, and it was left to Steven and the Gems to break the news to them that their daughter was dead on a battlefield or captured on some alien planet somewhere. 

Still, there was the other side of things. Connie couldn’t quite decide whether the lying actually was done or not. Sure, her mother had taken this revelation…okay not _well_ , but far better than expected. How she’d react to learning exactly how many times and in how many ways she'd already been in mortal peril though, that she was unsure about. It wasn’t too late for her to freak out and change her mind about this. Connie had carefully lied and skipped around information when they’d found out about the Gems to maintain the illusion that Steven, despite his magical origins, was really just a normal kid that was her perfectly normal absolutely-not-going-on-magical-adventures-with friend. She could easily do it again. Downplay the dangers she’d been in and hide the future ones as necessary. But then the cycle would just start over again. If they found out about _those_ lies, after a second promise of openness, the blow to her relationship with her parents might not be quite as repairable as it seemed now.

“Connie” Her mother’s voice brought her out of her thoughts. “I…well…” Connie had never seen her mother look so uncertain before. “I’m sorry.” That apology **really** caught her off guard. Her parents never changed their minds, and she could count on her hands the number of times they apologized to her for anything. “Your father and I…we should have noticed something before this. A year without lenses? All those times you came home scraped and cut? I can’t believe we’ve been this neglectful.”

Connie didn’t know how to react. She’d never seen her mother act like this. “It’s okay mom, really! I’ve been hiding this stuff after all, and you’re both so busy all the time with everything.” Her mother winced at that. “Oh! No, I didn’t mean it like…”

“No. You’re right.” She stated emphatically. “We have been too busy. Too busy to notice that our daughter is going through some…major things.” She glanced at Connie and smiled. “But I promise we’ll be changing that now.”

The car pulled into their driveway. “Good. It looks like your father’s home already. I think now would be a good time for nice long chat.” She must have seen Connie cringe. “Just a talk though.” She said reassuringly.

“So…no abacus?” Connie tried her best to hide the joy in her voice.

“No, no abacus. I think we’ll give you some immunity on this. For tonight anyway.” She quickly added at the surprised look on Connie’s face. “Right now the most important thing is to get us all on the same page. So just…tell us everything. We’ll figure out how to go from there.”

Connie wished that she could have stopped time to think things through. She wasn’t going to lie anymore, of that she was certain. But she could have used an opportunity to plan through her parent’s potential questions. Mostly she hoped they didn’t fixate too much on her eyes. She didn’t which would be worse, her father’s reaction to learning that a boy’s spit had found its way into her mouth, or her mother’s horror that it had happened because she’d shared a juice box with someone.


End file.
